Dare to Think | Web Design, Blog Development, Hosting and Print and Print made Simple
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Useful Developer and Business websites

Here you'll find a list of links that have proved invaluable to me over the years. As I find more useful sites then I'll add them to the ever increasing directory.

Apps

  • Compress Useful FREE Mac application that enables you to compress files in one of the following formats: bzip2, gzip, dmg, p7zip and zip

Blogs

Business

  • Business Link Free business advice and support service set up by the government
  • Docstoc Lots of professional documents, many available for free. You can then adapt and use as your own.
  • Inland Revenue Approved Mileage Rates Official rates to enable you to claim for business miles travelled in your own car
  • Seth Godin A fantastic blog by Seth Godin, entrepreneur and agent of change! Challenges you to look at different ways of marketing your fantastic product. Make sure you sign up to his daily email
  • Skype Chat for free to other Skype users or pay reduced costs to other world locations.

Dare to Think

Design

  • COLOURlovers Get some colour inspiration and check out the latest colour trends and palettes.
  • dafont.com A huge selection of around 9,000 fonts, and growing all the time. Some unusual fonts and many of the fonts are free.
  • Design Resources Contains everything for print and web including paper sizes, downloadable covers and labels, web browser PSD’s, web safe areas, html character tools. Check it out – it’s a fantastic resourse
  • Flickr Good source for visual inspiration as well as a lot of great images available to use for free on the creative commons license.
  • iStockphoto Gone are the days when you had to spend a fortune on quality, royalty free, photography and vector graphics. A huge choice and photos start at around a pound.
  • Kuler Generate colour themes to inspire you with your project. Select by rules i.e. compound, complementary or simply experiment. At last a Flash site that’s useful!
  • Lorem Ipsum Dummy text generator using the industry standard Lorem Ipsum. Useful when you or your client are still to finalise your copy.
  • Web Safe Fonts Useful list, and preview, of fonts that are safe to use for HTML text on the web for both Mac and PC

Domain Registration

  • 1and1 I still find 1and1 has some great offers and very reasonable prices throughout the year, especially on .co.uk domains.
  • Go Daddy Check Go Daddy for .com domains. Some great offers – check their prices against 1and1. Offer some good deals when you want to transfer a domain to them.

General

  • Case Converter Converts any text to upper, lower, proper or sentance case
  • Dropbox Share files and keep everything in sync with your family and work colleagues. Prices start from FREE for 2GB up to $199.99 for 100GB
  • Password Generator Generate a strong password using this online generator. For a really strong password remember to use at least 12 characters and use a combination of letters, numbers and symbols
  • Sendspace Send large files, up to 300mb, for free. Also offer a free desktop app.

Web Development

  • Can you see your site It might be that you have an internal problem i.e. Machine DNS or Router DNS caching issue. You can test to see if this is localised or external with this useful tool.
  • Change Text Case Enter any text into the text field and it will change the case of that text. I.e. change to uppercase, lowercase, mixed case etc
  • Character and Word Counter Enter your text into the text field and this will tell you how many characters and words your text contains.
  • CSS Optimiser Minimise the size of your CSS and generally optimise your standard CSS
  • CSS Validator Check your CSS is W3C compliant. Useful for checking for errors in your code and also whether there’s any problems with usability.
  • Design Resources Contains everything for print and web including paper sizes, downloadable covers and labels, web browser PSD’s, web safe areas, html character tools. Check it out – it’s a fantastic resourse
  • Domain Name Generator Domain Name Soup has a fantastic set of tools allowing you to find your perfect domain.
  • Font Compare A useful tool to compare up to 3 fonts, alongside each other. If you’re unsure what font to use for your site then this is your first port of call.
  • Google Adwords Tool Useful tool for checking keyword ideas. It shows how many searches for that keyword have been performed and gives possible alternatives.
  • Google Insights Compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. Useful for SEO and Keyword choices
  • Gzip compression test Type in your website url and see if Gzip compression is enabled on your site and how much it’s getting compressed by. A great way to reduce the output size of pages
  • Redirect Checker Check whether your domain is being viewed by search engines. Useful for checking the SEO Friendly 301 redirect.
  • Web Document Validator Check your web documents (HTML, XHTML etc) are W3C compliant. This will help with website usability and show code errors.
  • Web page size and download time test I love this tool. Enter a url and watch as it loads it in bar format listing the information for all sorts of things such as loading time, page size, image sizes etc etc. Really useful to see where you can streamline your site.
  • Web Safe Fonts Useful list, and preview, of fonts that are safe to use for HTML text on the web for both Mac and PC
  • Yahoo Site Explorer Find out what sites are linking to yours and also what sites are linking to your competitors. Very useful for SEO work.